SARATOGA SPRINGS -- About 15 percent of the people who voted Nov. 6 in Saratoga Springs' 25 voting districts did not vote on the question about whether the city should change its form of government.

Last week, election officials re-checked all of the voting machine results to confirm numbers and make minor adjustments. They show that of the 12,113 people who showed up to the polls to cast their ballots, 1,617 did not vote on the city's charter change proposition on the back of the ballot. Poll workers were instructed to hand Spa City voters their ballots face-down with the charter change question facing up and to remind voters of the question.

If passed, the initiative would have changed the city's current commission form of government to a council-manager form of government. Despite a three-year campaign for change by a citizen action group, Saratoga Citizen, the proposition failed, getting just 42.5 percent of the vote -- 4,468 votes to 6,036.

The number of people who vote on one race but failed to vote in another is known as the "undervote" -- for the charter change, the undervote was 1,617. On the other hand, the undervote in the presidential race was just 54 votes -- less than half a percentage point of people who voted Nov. 6.

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A higher percentage of people voted on this charter change question than on a similar question that was on the ballot in 2006. Then, about 83 percent of voters cast their ballots for charter change compared to this year's 87 percent.

Elections Commissioner William Frucci said he thinks that is because this year's vote was "highly publicized."

He pointed to the mailers, signs and ads that ran on both sides of the issue. "When you take all of those factors into account, you're going to get a higher turnout," he said.

This year's charter change proposal was defeated in 23 of the city's 25 election districts. The two outliers were District 8 -- a residential district in the core of the city hemmed in by Congress Park on the south, Broadway to the west, east to Nelson Avenue and Lake Avenue on its northern border -- and District 24 representing Skidmore College.

At Skidmore, the measure passed with nearly

80 percent of the vote.

In District 8, where both Saratoga Citizen Organizer Pat Kane and Mayor Scott Johnson live, residents passed the proposal with about 55.5 percent of the vote.

The results still do not count absentee ballots, which could be accepted as late as Monday, nor do they include affidavit ballots, which Board of Elections Commissioner Roger Schiera said were more numerous than in a typical year. He attributed most of the increase in affidavit ballots to people who voted in Saratoga Springs because they were displaced by Hurricane Sandy.

Similarly, President Barack Obama carried the city in all but two districts --17 and 22 which are adjacent to each other and represent everything east of the Northway and north of Union Avenue. Overall, 61 percent of Saratogians -- 7,204 of the 12,059 voters in the presidential race -- supported the incumbent over challenger Mitt Romney. At Skidmore, 96 percent of the 425 people who voted supported Obama.